Nice trebles with disastrous basses.
Review by Alexander M. on 28 Jan 2017 review stating Nice trebles with disastrous basses. Considering the price of this set, I would definitely give five stars for the trebles. They are of an excellent quality clear nylon strings with warm and clear tone. They were fairly stable in tuning, had a fine sustain for nylon strings and comfortable feel under the fingers. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same thing about the basses and would give them no more than one star as they were complete disaster. The SIT basses are clearly underdeveloped and, at the moment, are in a great need for major design improvements. When I strung my guitar with them, the brand-new SIT basses sounded worse in every aspect than a very old and used up Savarez (500, Corum Blue) that were previously installed. These SIT basses sounded very dull and tubby, while producing too much of timbral contrast with a nice sounding trebles. Second, the longevity was also one of the worst out there. Basses tarnished and died virtually on the next day after the installation. They could withstand only about 5 hours of mild practice, and thus, they are very much of a single use. There was no sustain in the basses and the proportion of gauges is miscalculated. The 6th and, especially, the 5th strings are a way too thick in their relation to the 4th, causing them to sound much duller. However, all these issues were not even major here. A major issue is that the winding on the 5th and, especially, on the 4th strings terribly splits in the saddle area, while installing the string, and in the nut area, while tuning the guitar. On the second day, the winding on the 4th string in the saddle area went apart so badly (about 2.5-3 mm long) that it started producing a horrible buzzing noise, so I immediately removed these strings to stop offending my fine concert guitar. The same problem was also with the medium tension set, which I tried several months ago on a different guitar. Since I’ve mentioned this problem, I need to clarify that I always make sure that the saddle and the nut on all my guitars are very smooth and without any cutting edges where the string winding might potentially get stuck. I usually make these parts myself to set up my preferred action. No other strings had such problem on my guitars, with maybe only a few exceptions. Thus, it is very frustrating that the company making such lovely traditional nylon trebles has totally failed to do a good job with the basses. I can only hope that some day they will realize this and, eventually, will redesign their basses from scratch. As of now, they would be absolutely unacceptable for any serious concert-level performer.
On SIT ECH102 Classits Elite HT Classical Guitar Strings, Full Set